RUPERT MURDOCH

David McKnight exposes Murdoch's covert use of his media empire to further his political agenda.

When Rupert Murdoch called, prime ministers and presidents picked up the phone. Murdoch's News Corporation is the most powerful media organisation in the world. Its commercial success is obvious, but less well understood is its successful pursuit of Murdoch's political goals. News Corp has been a media group with a mission, and David McKnight uncovers its crusade for Murdoch's unique brand of conservatism over three decades. Drawing on extensive original research, McKnight tracks NewsCorp's pursuit of conservative ideas, from Reagan and Thatcher to the Tea Party and its war on Barack Obama. He shows how Murdoch's political connections underpinned the scandal of phone hacking in Britain and thwarted investigation. He examines the secretive corporate culture of News Corporation: its private political seminars for editors, its sponsorship of think tanks and its recurring editorial campaigns around the world. Its success is reflected in the fact that the campaigns are familiar to us all: small government and market deregulation, skepticism on climate change, support for neo-conservative adventures such as Iraq and relentless criticism of all things 'liberal'. For all its power and influence, News Corporation is now in a profound crisis. The mobile phone hacking scandal has irreparably tarnished its reputation. Its ability to use its news media to bully politicians may be fatally weakened. In the longer term its confident free market ideology is no longer the orthodoxy since the arrival of Obama and the global financial crisis. Murdoch's unwavering support for the invasion of Iraq has backfired and his flip-flopping on climate change has discredited him. News Corporation faces an uncertain future as digital technology eats into the newspaper empire which has been the basis of Murdoch's political power. David McKnight is Associate Professor and a Senior Research Fellow at the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of NSW. Known as a commentator on right wing politics, he is the author of three books, including Beyond Right and Left. A former journalist at the Sydney Morning Herald and ABC TV's Four Corners, he also contributes regularly to the opinion pages of Australian newspapers.